Pentagon study declares American empire is ‘collapsing’

to protect U.S. power ... more of the same: more surveillance, more propaganda (“strategic manipulation of perceptions”) and more military expansionism.... The “hyper-connectivity and weaponization of information, disinformation, and dis­affection”... the uncontrolled spread of information... the “inevitable elimination of secrecy and operational security... generalized disintegra­tion of traditional authority structures… decay and potential failure of the post-Cold War status quo.”... Among the most dangerous drivers of this risk of civil unrest and mass destabilization, the document asserts, are different categories of fact. ...
two solutions to the information threat. The first is to make better use of U.S. mass surveillance ... One would be hard-pressed to find a clearer statement of imperial intent in any U.S. Army document:... The very concept of ‘defence’ is thus re-framed as the capacity to use overwhelming military might to get one’s way ...
the document puts forward a combination of strategies: consolidating the U.S. intelligence complex and using it more ruthlessly; intensifying mass surveillance and propaganda to manipulate popular opinion; expanding U.S. military clout to ensure access to “strategic regions, markets, and resources”....
what else would you expect from a research process so deeply narcissistic, that it involves little more than talking to yourself?... a powerful illustration of the self-limiting failure of conventional risk-assessment approaches.